• s|k (unregistered)

    "it's so easy that companies feel like they can get away with hiring developers instead of engineers"

    This site gets more full of itself everyday. Seriously, can we drop the generalizations about classes of people from these 'witty' articles?

    Thanks.

  • Jan (unregistered)

    Can you say: JAX-B?

  • Robin The Obvious (unregistered)

    It'd be really nice if someone came up with a transformation language for XML

    Erm.... ever heard of XSLT??? Your post betrays the average XML shills' major downfall.... criticizing something they haven't bothered to fully comprehend. If I hear another person on the web suggesting that XML is 'bloat' and that we should all use JSON/YAML/Insert-your-favorite-half-arsed-serialization-syntax-here I'll go crazy! RTFM, or is that something that only "developers" get to do?

  • DrkMatter (unregistered) in reply to Robin The Obvious

    Someone forgot their sarcasm detector at home today.

  • (cs)

    XML is generally horrible for machines to read or for humans to read. Guess what we read in different ways.

    When managers realise that we might end up with some vaguely efficient storage/trasmission syntaxes and a decent parser at either end for people to use...

    Of course the answer <insert local comms company here> want you see is "buy more bandwidth"

  • Unomi (unregistered)
    It'd be really nice if someone came up with a transformation language for XML, but I suspect that this would fail for the reasons stated above.

    Is he serious or just being sarcastic? Is it because XSLT is a XML in itself?

    Or wat is wrong with XSLT? I'm not into XSLT that much, so if anybody can point me to any drawbacks, please do.

    Captcha: dreadlocks (you mean, spaghetti XML?)

    • Unomi -
  • Codedoc (unregistered)

    omg if i were to maintain this code I'd quit faster than you can say captcha...

  • Mithras (unregistered)

    Yes, kids, the "transformation language" aside was a joke. Sheesh.

  • steve (unregistered) in reply to s|k
    s|k:
    "it's so easy that companies feel like they can get away with hiring developers instead of engineers"

    This site gets more full of itself everyday. Seriously, can we drop the generalizations about classes of people from these 'witty' articles?

    Thanks.

    Too bad it's true all too often. Where do you think a lot of the content for WTF comes from?

  • (cs)

    Most people want their sarcasm to be understood in their comments. Yet they cannot read a comment and understand sarcasm. What is this world coming to?

  • EmVee (unregistered)

    Come on, it's not that bad, really...

    They even included the No-Nasty-Stack-Trace-Ever-Pattern!

  • biznatchio (unregistered) in reply to steve
    steve:
    Where do you think a lot of the content for WTF comes from?

    I'd guess from the same type of people who didn't quite understand the XSLT joke.

  • (cs)

    Code like that makes baby Jebus cry.

  • David (unregistered)

    Surely XML is just a strange acronym (well, abbreviation for those pedants out there) for "verbose text file".

  • CaptainObvious (unregistered) in reply to s|k
    s|k:
    "it's so easy that companies feel like they can get away with hiring developers instead of engineers"

    This site gets more full of itself everyday. Seriously, can we drop the generalizations about classes of people from these 'witty' articles?

    Thanks.

    Last time I checked, you generally don't hire a short-order cook to build your house, nor do you hire a historian to design aircraft. See, generalizations are made about groups of people based on their job title, since that title is supposed to be indicative of the tasks they were hired to perform.

    Now, that doesn't mean they are not capable of performing other duties competantly, but it does mean that they weren't hired to perform those other duties.

    Software Engineer, Developer, Programmer, Systems Analyst, Technician; depending on who you ask any or all of these mean the same thing. The dictionary disagrees, however.

    In the case of Software Engineer vs. Developer, an engineer is responsible for design, not implementation. There exists an implication that an engineer is capable of developing a prototype or possibly final version, but no such implication exists for a developer; a developer makes manifest a design, (s)he does not create that design.

    Given the overlap between these two roles and the muddled environment of many workplaces, it is not surprising to find that these titles are tossed around interchangably without regard for any differences. This is a quirk of an industry where most people don't understand the nature of the tasks involved and simply black-box it all as 'computer stuff' that they don't understand.

    But the article isn't talking about job titles here, its talking about people; people that are qualified to perform one job but not another. So don't get defensive that you were hired as a 'Developer' and the article is labeling people using actual meanings rather than arbitrary labels issued by HR for the purposes of illustrating humorous but horrible systems that originate from people performing tasks they are not qualified to do. Regardless of what title these people were hired under, it is clear they were not qualified to disign the system--but it works, so clearly they are capable of implementing a design. Developers, not Software Engineers. This isn't arrogance, its fact.

  • (cs) in reply to Jan
    Jan:
    Can you say: JAX-B?

    I can, but I refuse to.

  • Mike5 (unregistered) in reply to steve
    steve:
    s|k:
    "it's so easy that companies feel like they can get away with hiring developers instead of engineers"

    This site gets more full of itself everyday. Seriously, can we drop the generalizations about classes of people from these 'witty' articles?

    Thanks.

    Too bad it's true all too often. Where do you think a lot of the content for WTF comes from?

    LOL. This actually implies that some made up (not that I'm implying that I believe everything I see on this site).

    Captcha: RIAA - OMG! They're everywhere!

  • EmVee (unregistered) in reply to CaptainObvious

    The field of ICT development is packed with people who want to make their job sound that much more interesting. I'm not a java programmer, I'm an Architect! I don't write documents, I'm a functional requirements analyst, etc...

    Apart from cooking, a cook will often clean his own equipment, write the menu's and go out shopping for ingredients. In IT, this would require 4 roles for one reason or another :(

    If you develop software, you are a software developer. Period.

  • Aaron (unregistered)

    If only the J2EE and .NET had any sort of library support for implementing and consuming Web Services based on XML...

    I think perhaps I'll invent such a protocol. I think perhaps I'll call it SOAP.

  • Dimitry Z (unregistered) in reply to s|k

    I second this.

  • W (unregistered) in reply to Jan
    Jan:
    Can you say: JAX-B?
    Every day. The article author speaks of xpath, but jaxb has pretty much made xpath superfluous in the company I work for.

    Too bad most people who work with xml have never heard of schemas, and most of those who don't are of the kind that think a doubling in bandwidth or parsing speed is always a disaster.

  • Dimitry Z (unregistered) in reply to Dimitry Z

    I mean I second the first post.

  • ARand (unregistered)

    My eyes, they are bleeding. My brain, it is crashed.

  • (cs) in reply to CaptainObvious
    CaptainObvious:
    s|k:
    "it's so easy that companies feel like they can get away with hiring developers instead of engineers"

    This site gets more full of itself everyday. Seriously, can we drop the generalizations about classes of people from these 'witty' articles?

    Thanks.

    [snip]

    Software Engineer, Developer, Programmer, Systems Analyst, Technician; depending on who you ask any or all of these mean the same thing. The dictionary disagrees, however.

    [much more snippage]

    It really doesn't help, IMO, that so many people who call themselves "Software Engineers" are not legally qualified to call themselves that -- at least, in Canada, where the ability to use the name "engineer" seems to be much more strictly enforced than in the U.S.

    In Canada, it is only in the past handful of years that any university has put out graduates that really could call themselves engineers, i.e., certified by the legally-sanctioned bodies.

    No matter how good I think I am at designing software, I cannot call myself an Engineer (TM)... and I really wish that other people that can't wouldn't either.

    I once had a title of "Software Designer". I liked that one :-)

  • (cs)

    Our development shop has created web applications for document delivery for a number of years. Since the fish that had swallowed us back at the turn of the century had been swallowed by a whale a few years back, they were looking to merge a couple of separate but similar applications. As such, we inherited someone else's code.

    There were a number of bad problems with this code that had not been spotted in initial reviews of it. Here's a representative sample:

    int bananaCount =
bananasSet.getElementsByTagName("banana").getLength();
    

    for (int i = 0; i < bananaCount; i++)
{
Element banana = (Element)
bananasSet.getElementsByTagName("banana").item(i);
// ... do stuff with the banana ...
}
    Since after all, a depth-first search of a DOM sub-tree should always be done once for the match count and repeated for each match.

  • coz (unregistered) in reply to s|k

    uh-uh...someone really thinks that he built a better-mouse-trap (to be read as: the dev who wrote that crapy if xml code...)

    shut your mouth about classes of people'n'shit; I don't read this forum to see someone bitchin' about socialk issues and races and colors (you're all blue to me)...I read it to gain DO/DON'T experience...and did you know that sometimes is useful what you find here?

    For example a couple of WTFs ago I learned that holding down the Alt key does not generate keyboard buffer overflow and also keeps terminal services connection open...cool!

    Captcha: (...) the bus driver says: Dark-blues go into the back of the bus, light-blues stay in front

  • (cs) in reply to Robin The Obvious
    Robin The Obvious:
    It'd be really nice if someone came up with a transformation language for XML

    Erm.... ever heard of XSLT???

    Robin the Obvious, meet Sarcasm.

  • Oofa (unregistered)

    I looked at that code, my eyes crossed, and I jumped straight to the comments.

  • jonny lech (unregistered)

    I assumed it was sarcasm when I read the "no transformation language" bit, but it's delivery is horrid. The context just doesn't show it as sarcasm very well, so I wouldn't fault anyone who didn't see it as such.

    captcha: die in a fire

  • Welbog (unregistered)

    Sarcasm should always be written in orange text.

  • coz (unregistered) in reply to EmVee

    you're another working class oppressor, aren't you! If you own a restaurant and your cook does all that other stuff besides cooking, I'd stop drinking coffee there because I'm sure that guy puts a little arsenic in your coffee each morning...

  • (cs)

    As someone who has a B.Eng degree, and P.Eng. license, (but who happens to develop software for a living) it always irks me to see people who have a MSCE designation diluting the term "engineer". Gnnnarh!

  • Cartroo (unregistered) in reply to AssimilatedByBorg
    AssimilatedByBorg:
    It really doesn't help, IMO, that so many people who call themselves "Software Engineers" are not legally qualified to call themselves that -- at least, in Canada, where the ability to use the name "engineer" seems to be much more strictly enforced than in the U.S.

    I'm not sure about the specific legal situation here in the UK, but I do remember that one of the reasons my university added an "Ethics" course to the Computer Science syllabus was so that the course qualified for Engineering Council funding (which was worth a 250 quid a year bursary for each student). If we qualified for such funding, I'd hazard a guess that perhaps we also had a reasonable justification for calling ourselves Software Engineers.

    These days I tend to be either a "programmer" (to non-technical types), a "senior software engineer" (to anybody whose opinion of my job title may affect the cash or treatment I receive at the time) or a "developer" (to anybody who knows enough to know it doesn't make any difference). To anybody else I'm a code monkey.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Welbog
    Welbog:
    Sarcasm should always be written in orange text.

    Yeah, that's a great idea...

  • Cartroo (unregistered) in reply to Welbog
    Welbog:
    Sarcasm should always be written in orange text.

    I refer you to The Register's colour coding scheme.

    We Brits are well practised in such matters...

  • EmVee (unregistered) in reply to Cartroo
    Cartroo:
    These days I tend to be either a "programmer" (to non-technical types), a "senior software engineer" (to anybody whose opinion of my job title may affect the cash or treatment I receive at the time) or a "developer" (to anybody who knows enough to know it doesn't make any difference). To anybody else I'm a code monkey.

    Amen! Titles are only useful for people who swap business cards... You know the kind...

  • (cs) in reply to Cartroo

    They spelled it 'Color' in the title?!?

  • blah (unregistered) in reply to EmVee

    Have you ever worked in a kitchen? One person ordering from suppliers. One person doing basic food preperation. One person doing the actual cooking. One person cleaning stuff etc. and thats a small kitchen. Only in the smallest kitchens will one person do almost all the work and that person will normally also be the owner. And that place only did 35 covers. Seriuosly division of labour happens everywhere. It is just really hard to be lazy in a kitchen. A stressed boss with a knife is generally a good incentive to work hard.

  • Sven (unregistered)

    That's pretty bad, but having done a lot of XSLT in the past I can say XSLT doesn't really tend to be much more readable than that (not unless you have a good syntax highlighter that separates the XSLT elements from the result elements). And it can be a PITA to debug.

    I once saw a speech (about XML) by some dude who was wearing a shirt that said "//expert[topic='XML']". I want one of those, but have been unable to find them.

  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered) in reply to AssimilatedByBorg

    I agree with Assimilated. I don't have an Engineering degree, but when I worked for an American company my job title was "Software Engineer". I felt awkward about it. I now work for a Canadian company under the title "Software Developer" and I'm more comfortable with the designation.

  • Susanna (unregistered)

    Misuse of XML really gets my goat. I once worked on a project for a large international bank where the XML the contractor's code spit out began with an element named <ROOT>.

  • diaphanein (unregistered) in reply to AssimilatedByBorg

    [quote user="AssimilatedByBorg]

    <snip />

    I once had a title of "Software Designer". I liked that one :-)[/quote]

    I vote why should call ourselves Shakespeare's Monkeys. (1000 monkeys, 1000 typewriters, eventually we'll finish our second system...)

  • (cs) in reply to Robin The Obvious
    Robin The Obvious:
    It'd be really nice if someone came up with a transformation language for XML

    Erm.... ever heard of XSLT??? Your post betrays the average XML shills' major downfall.... criticizing something they haven't bothered to fully comprehend. If I hear another person on the web suggesting that XML is 'bloat' and that we should all use JSON/YAML/Insert-your-favorite-half-arsed-serialization-syntax-here I'll go crazy! RTFM, or is that something that only "developers" get to do?

    ahahhahaha

    misdirected rant FTW

  • XML Hater (unregistered)

    While this code is indeed horrendous, the people mentioned were correct about one thing. XPath is a stinking piece of crap! It's worse than regular expressions (but not quite as powerful).

  • Asd (unregistered)

    I have a BSc. I was hired as a "developer". I am now an "engineer". Titles don't mean shit. If you are proud of yours, you probably write UML all day long, and couldn't code to save your life.

  • Tribbles (unregistered) in reply to SpiritOfGrandeur
    SpiritOfGrandeur:
    Most people want their sarcasm to be understood in their comments. Yet they cannot read a comment and understand sarcasm. What is this world coming to?

    The hard part with seeing the sarcasm in that statement... I've heard to many people say this who were serious...

    Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers... :(

  • jho (unregistered) in reply to DrkMatter
    DrkMatter:
    Someone forgot their sarcasm detector at home today.

    Is that meant to be English? You American's sure do twist our language some times.

  • order (unregistered) in reply to Aaron

    These were probably the kind of developers that are afraid to bathe and when they heard of SOAP ran the other way.

  • (cs) in reply to Codedoc
    Codedoc:
    omg if i were to maintain this code I'd quit faster than you can say captcha...

    Word. It's been a while since a WTF has made me physically ill. barf

  • benk (unregistered) in reply to jho
    jho:
    DrkMatter:
    Someone forgot their sarcasm detector at home today.

    Is that meant to be English? You American's sure do twist our language some times.

    Especially when we pluralize with apostrophes? Oh wait...

Leave a comment on “Shooting XML ”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article